A unique occurrence happened this morning. We did not awaken until we heard the voice of our expedition leader, Peter, over the loudspeaker telling us it was 7AM and that breakfast was being served. This is the first time on this trip we have not awaken earlier on our own. It is again foggy this morning and the temperature is 36 degrees. The sun is trying to peek out and hopefully we will soon begin to see the shoreline.

Our ship has been proceeding southwest all night long as we start working our way back towards Longyearbyen. As has been the case the last few days the daily trip agenda is fairly blank. It lists the time for breakfast, lunch, tea time and dinner. The rest of the day is unannounced. That is the nature of expedition trips. We wander and search for opportunities to either go ashore, take zodiac rides or simply watch the world go by. Animal sightings or other interesting things will draw the ship’s attention. The slack time is usually filled by on board lectures by one of the naturalists on board so we are never bored. In fact my experience so far is that there has been very little downtime for me to simply read or even take a nap. I did not want to miss anything!

At 9:30 there was a meeting where we were given detailed information about our upcoming disembarkation in two days and return to Oslo. It was somber moment as people realized our trip was soon coming to an end.

The fog gradually dissipated and the brilliant sun appeared and by 10 AM we were in the middle of Bellsund (the entrance to two large fjords) under blue skies and snow-capped mountains. It was a quiet morning which presented a good time to upload some pictures, catch up on writing this blog and update  the ship’s journey on the map I bought.

It was now too late to launch a land trip before lunch so the staff pulled another rabbit out of the hat by offering a lecture by Kasper Jaeger, the naturalist we have become so fond of. He is Danish but lives in Northern Norway where he owns and operates a business that offers skiing and dog sledding excursions, when he is not on board a Lindblad ship as a local naturalist expert. He jokes that he thinks he got the job because he is the only one who can properly pronounce all those Norwegian words. His talk this morning was on the history of trapping in Svalbard. Again it was a fascinating talk which gave us insight into the history and manner of winter trapping here in Svalbard. It took very hearty men (and a few women) to trap in the harsh conditions that they had to endure. The industry still exists in a small way, mostly as a way of preserving the culture rather than making people rich.

The fog returned and we had to move the ship to escape it as the staff wanted us to be able to get off the ship for a hike this afternoon. We ended up mid-way up a fjord called Van Mijentjord, near the location of an abandoned coal mine where the sun again was shining brightly.

It was too late to do a walk before lunch and too early for lunch so Tony Wheeler, the creator of the Lonely Planet empire, showed us more slides of his travels around the world, focusing on really out-of-the-way places like Afghanistan, New Guinea, North Korea, Chernobyl, Iran and Iraq, certainly not places on your everyday travel network.

Lunch today was extremely popular as it had a Mexican theme and we all were excited! Shortly afterwards the shore excursion hikes commenced once the scouting teams went out to verify that there were no polar bears in the area. They staff obsesses about safety when it comes to polar bears. We again chose the “medium” hike which is supposed to be about 1.5-2 miles. Steve and family again went on the long hike (3 miles); my excuse is that I am 78 now and have to begin taking it easy! We lucked out again as Kasper was our tour guide. And again we learned a lot about the area and animal living here as we walked along the shore. Kasper had his rifle and there was a second armed staff member of the hill above, watching over us. The only animal we saw today was a reindeer down in the gully walking along a seasonal riverbed. The trip was spot on, going 2.1 miles! We were back on the ship by about 5 PM in time for a shower before cocktails and the daily wrap up talk by the staff.

I must comment on the efficiency of the process of unloading the Zodiacs from the ship, sending out scouting parties to verify safety, loading 8-10 people quickly into the Zodiacs, transferring us to the shore where staff help us out of the boat, storage bins on shore where we leave life vests as we take our hike, returning us to the ship and uploading the Zodiacs as they are no longer needed so we can depart our anchorage and move on. It is a work of art.

Tonight was the final daily recap by the naturalists as tomorrow night is the Captain’s cocktail party. Each of the staff spent about 5 minutes sharing some information about today’s activities, local information and in one case a poem written by the staff person. The executive chef once again discussed this evening’s menu which includes a special Swedish cheese tart starter and reindeer stew which I intend to have.

After dinner there was a preview of the video being put together by the videographer of the cruise. Orders were being taken for those who wanted one. There were shots of us in what little we saw so I will be purchasing the memory. This was then followed by a band made up of ship staff: 6 guitar players, a singer and drummer. They were darn good and pretty soon most of the young people in the room (of which there were many because of the Climateforce 2041 conference) were on their feet dancing the night away. The band  played non-stop for over an hour and had trouble quitting because the crowd wanted more. We did join the conga line for one of the numbers and the staff said it was the longest conga line they have ever seen on the ship. By 11PM the band finally quit as people were now trying to go to bed, as we are. I imagine the younger crowd continued to party the night away.